Author's Note:

Guess who's back – back again. Eminem plays in the distance.

When The Man Comes Around World: Part 2

Let's take a step back…

Jet scrambled to grab hold of something, anything, but he couldn't. The floor was smooth, the force field wouldn't bend, his chest ached as the air around him rushed away from his lungs. "Dean!" He shouted but he couldn't reach Dean's out stretched hand. His friend pushed into the transparent film, he reached and their fingertips almost touched, Jet stretched for it but it got him nowhere.

'I'm not going to make it.' He realized as his body dragged along the pavement, his lungs felt like they were collapsing and that he should say something but no words were possible. It all happened so fast, the ground beneath his broke apart and everything flew toward him like an explosion happened all around. Parts of the concrete broke off and crashed into his legs and he let out whatever breath he'd managed to take in a scream.

Then it all went dark, he couldn't breathe anymore and it hurt. He felt suffocated internally; his body seemed to squeeze into itself like some kind of implosion. He'd never hurt that way before; he'd never felt it in his head and in his thoughts. Everything was blurry, he could see the debris that entered with him but it disappeared. He was flying, swirling around and whipping through the air faster than the mess of rubble. Flying? No, he must have been falling.

Jet had no orientation, no idea what was up, down or anything like that, but what he did know was the feeling of the ground beneath him, beside him, all around him. He tumbled, upside down and flopping over himself like a rag doll. Maybe he didn't know where it was. "Son of a bitch!" He heard himself shouting but he wasn't even sure when he'd said it or why, nothing made sense.

His mind raced and his body felt as stressed as it might if he'd just run a marathon, but the more he tried to pay attention to himself the more he realized he actually wasn't moving anymore. He was lying still, his back to the ground and his eyes wildly searching above him. Jet gasped for air and heard a strained squeaking sound escape him, he couldn't breathe. Everything felt heavy, he was heavy, his head couldn't lift and his arms barely flinched. 'I can't move!'

Screeches of creatures echoed around him and he gasped for air, his chest constricted and his eyes widened in terror, 'I can't breathe! It hurts! It hurts – make it stop!' He reached up and grabbed at his throat thinking maybe something was blocking it, maybe someone was choking him but nothing was there, no one was touching him. He wheezed and squeezed his eyes shut, everything was tense and he wanted to vomit, some kind of relief from anything. His head spun in circles and for a second he thought he was standing again, had he pushed himself to his feet?

In a panic it seemed he had, his legs stumbled and he saw everything spin around him in some delusional mess of black and faded colours that might as well have been grey. Jet coughed once that led into a string of hacking fits, his chest compressed and his knees hit the ground again, hands floundering ahead of him to try and stop his face from hitting the dirt. It didn't help and he wound up face down in a pool of what he hoped was just saliva but it started to taste like blood.

His eyes flinched and twitched around like he was still moving and attempting to focus on a circling target, though they had no reason to do any of it. Jet's throat tensed and he felt his gag reflex at work but nothing happened, he convulsed and choked on his own tongue as another batch of heavy coughing plagued him. He whimpered between breaths, as strained and few as they were, it hurt. It was crushing him and his mind wouldn't stop reminding him of what he'd said.

I'll catch up.

Jet tried to stand again, he used all his strength and rushed to his feet and it worked, he was standing for all of two seconds before consciousness fled from him. He'd stood up too fast after straining himself too hard, blood fled from his face and he collapsed. Falling backward Jet watched a blurred world swing past him before he felt the ground on the back of his head.

The Void

A melody of scraping, heavy breathing, and generally dismal ambience graced his ears as his mind slowly slipped back into place. Jet groaned softly and opened his eyes, he saw nothing, it was all dark or blurry. He'd hit his head, he remembered that much. It hurt to move but for a second he forgot what had happened – and what a beautiful second that was.

He tried to focus on breathing, it was still hard to do it and the pain was still there though it had dulled. Tears dripped from the corners of his eyes and bled into his hair, he couldn't get up; it was too painful to move. Each breath ached in his chest and it felt like it tightened each time he exhaled with no let up. But it couldn't have been true, no matter how much his mind told him that breathing was killing him. He'd fallen unconscious and if breathing would have killed him he wouldn't have woken up again, 'It's my own head that's killing me.' He told himself and tried to soothe the frantic breathing of his heart.

'What did Cas say about vacuo? They suck, they're hard to kill… and they're connected to the Void.' He raised his eyebrows a bit, noted the headache that gave him but paid it no mind as he tried to take in the surroundings. Blurred vision didn't help but it wasn't much more than darkness and strange shapes in the distance. 'I must be in the Void somewhere…' He tried to rationalize to himself and keep his head calm, he wasn't sure that discovery was much of a help.

I'll meet up with you later.

Jet snarled and tried to sit up, 'How do I get out of here? How do these fuckers do it?' His body shifted for him but gave out under the pressure of the Void, it made him sick and dizzy. A concussion could have been possible, the more he thought about it, "Fuck me…" he groaned and slumped back again.

"Hello?"

Someone called out from the darkness, a voice he didn't recognize but it rang a bell in his head. Jet tried to move again but it still wasn't happening so he relaxed and looked around in the hopes that he'd see someone, "Hey."

"There's someone else down here? Are you human?" The voice was scared; hesitant to ask questions but whoever it was he guessed they were lonely because that hesitation didn't last long. It sounded like a girl, or a little kid, he wasn't sure which one.

"Yeah…" Jet hissed out the word and struggled to inhale again, reminding himself that he was allowed to breathe, that he only thought it hurt. "But I can't move."

Silence followed for thirty seconds before a shaky response reached him; "How'd you get here?"

"Got sucked in by some monster, you?"

"I don't really know, things were fine when I went to bed but… it's been dark for days and I don't know where anyone is." They hiccupped the last few words and Jet had to listen to the sound of someone, a young woman or a child, cry in the distance.

"Hey, what's your name?" He asked as casually as he could.

Sniffling followed until the other person was able to speak again, "Rex," it was a kid, Jet concluded.

"I'm Jet, nice to meet you Rex." He closed his eyes to steady his head and calm the spinning. "Don't cry, alright?"

"But we can't get out of here, what are we gonna do?" Rex whimpered back, it was creepy how his voice kind of echoed in the air like it had but Jet didn't doubt his did it too.

"I'll figure it out, where are you? Can you follow my voice?" It hurt less to speak than it had before, maybe it was the fact he had something to do now, something to push for. But his last words to Sam lingered in his head; he had to get to the others somehow.

"I'll try."

"Good, just walk this way. How do you feel? Does it hurt?" He inhaled shakily and tried to get a better handle on his breathing than he had. Again, it wasn't as bad but it was still fairly awful.

"Not anymore, I got used to it."

"Wow, you're strong Rex, I don't think I could get used to this."

Jet spent the better part of what he was certain had been an hour coaxing Rex closer, and he heard the distance slowly shorten until Rex should've been right there with him. "Where are you, buddy?" He called again and looked around, his head feeling less like a bowl of soup and more like it should.

"Right here." Rex's voice was altered a bit that time, almost multi-toned.

He looked toward the sound but Rex leaned right over him, Jet yelped quietly from the start it gave him but more than that he was stunned. Rex didn't so much have a face as he did have glowing eyes and an illuminated mouth, all of which was encompassed in a shifting mass of black, weighted fog. It shifted and swirled around, though generally kept the basic shape of a person – a full-grown person actually.

Jet noted that the childish voice speaking to him suddenly felt a lot creepier than it had ten minutes ago. "What are you?"

"Imperator," Rex grinned wickedly with a tone to match, no more children imitations. "Means warlord, emperor." A hand formulated around Jet's cheek and caressed lightly, other parts of the body seemed to drift a bit from the one area of concentration. He could only hold a certain number physical shapes at a time, it seemed, as part of his face shifted like the same kind of airy sand the rest of him was made of.

"Rex means king."

Jet swallowed nervously and smirked at the menace above him, "So you're some big shot, huh?"

"I'm the big shot, pretty boy."

He didn't like that answer, every planned take-over or whatever the Void was doing had some kind of intelligence mixed in. Apparently Rex was exactly that for the creatures they'd been fighting, or much worse but he didn't want to consider that. Hell, he didn't want to consider his entire situation, "Jethro means pre-eminence or excellence so, you know, I'm kind of important too."

That wicked face just smiled at him and a deep laughter echoed from it, "You're cute, I like that." Rex slid his finger along Jet's jaw and tilted his head up a little, "From what my anima sent back home before your group killed it, I assume you're part of the chosen group."

"Not a priest, if that's what you're looking for." Jet sneered and barely flinched when Rex grabbed his face forcefully and held him still.

"I'd recognize the coat if you were, but lucky for me you aren't. Jet, you want to get home don't you? To Sammy?"

Jet's face twisted into a snarl and he pulled away from the imperator, "Don't you fucking call him that, don't even think of saying his name."

"It's even cuter how you think you have the power to speak to me that way, you humans have always been so feisty."

Jet remembered the black smoke coming from his face in that vision, the way he spoke broken apart and a mess of his former self. It had something to do with Rex, but that was his ticket home. The monster looming over him, the creature claiming to be a king would get him out. "What do you plan on doing? What do you need me for?"

"I'm sure you've noticed," Rex sighed and slapped his hand through Jet but all it did was waft over him like a thick mist, "I need a physical body."

"I noticed, but I don't know why." Jet furrowed his brow and watched Rex draw his hand back into place.

"The beings that freed me didn't manage to finish the job of getting me a host, it seems I can't go any further from my Void than its deepest parts." He sounded regretful, lamenting his loss of freedom in a way Jet was pretty damn sure all super villains did.

"What makes you think I'm going to give you what you need? I saw Futurum, I know what you turn me into."

"Then you also know that I get you out of this place, isn't that what you need? Or are you going to give up?" The imperator grinned wider and passed over him, hovering in the space above his head and losing all shape until he was just one swirling mass. "Are you going to break your promise?"

Jet frowned but watched as an image flickered in the strange being that flowed above him, Sam was holding Jet's hand as they fought the anima's force as it nearly pulling them down to a fate not unlike his currently was.

"Promise me," Sam shouted and squeezed Jet's hand, "Promise you won't give up."

Jet's expression tightened as he watched, his chest ached again, he could see Sam and it hurt.

"I promise, I said I'd keep you safe didn't I?"

"So what do you say, Tull?"

"Still surprised you need my permission," Jet huffed and glared as Rex took form again, they would've been nose to nose if the Void king had one.

"It'd be helpful."

"Why?"

"Because if you fight me tooth and nail I'll wear your body out and then I'll get stuck down here again, you'd be dead, and I'm back at square one. So what do you say? You did promise him."

Jet wanted nothing more than to punch that smug bastard in the face, but again he didn't really have a face to punch.

'Who says I lose control?' He thought to himself as he stared down the monster, 'I saw what happens when I arrive, but who says I stay that way?'

"Tick tock, tough guy."

'It's arrogant, it's stupid, it's selfish.' He repeated to himself as his heart weighed him down, kept him grounded. 'I miss Sam. I miss Dean. I miss those goddamn Winchesters.'

I love you Jet.

'Sam's going to hate me…'

Jet's one of the strongest guys I know.

'Dean's gonna be disappointed.'

We're family.

Jet smirked, 'Cas is going to be pissed.'

His expression remained still, slightly smug but closer to neutral as he nodded his head just a little, chin tilted up like he did.

"Do it."